Luke Soules

Luke Soules

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I'm Luke, the co-founder and CxO of iFixit. What's CxO? Well long after I chose that title it's now become "Chief Experience Officer." However, the true answer is that it's a made-up title I thought was cool. The idea is that "x" was a variable and you could insert whatever letter was relevant to the task at hand. Sometimes I'd be filling the role of COO, other times CFO, and sometimes CEO. So now you know!

My first laptop was a PowerBook 540c "Blackbird." Almost, but not quite, like an SR-71 "Blackbird". One night my PowerBook's hinge suffered a premature death, which served to be the first of many, many, many laptops I'd take apart. I think the PowerBook G3 Pismo is still my favorite laptop of all time.

Risposte

Success! I’ve learned a lot about how my dryer operates, and it’s once again happily spinning and drying clothes. I think the root cause was a bad bearing on the idler pulley. The idler pulley keeps tension on the belt, and the stuck pulley then put too much strain on the motor and burned it out. The belt broke during disassembly, but needed to be replaced anyway. I broke the blower wheel during disassembly, so that was the only “unnecessary” part of this repair. The dryer was also desperately in need of having the lint cleaned out from all its parts. Idler pulley: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B018... $7.15 Belt: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00M... $12.98 Motor: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00D...$54.44 (was refurbished) Blower Wheel: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B008...$30.98 My grand total: $105.55 Had I maintained my dryer and cleaned the lint out and replaced the idler pulley and belt at the first sign of the drum not spinning easily, this repair would have been vastly easier...

Unfortunately we don't have a good source for this part and don't expect to be able to get many of this part in the near future. We'll certainly be looking for other sources, but right now the only way we're able to get this part is by taking apart complete display assemblies. Since I don't think we'll have many of these soon, If you're able to find this part somewhere else I'd get it there.

Unfortunately there isn't a cheap part that includes the home button. The home button and frame is included in the complete display assembly, but that part is pretty pricey since it's the entire front half of the phone.

If you have a Mac mini that's model A1176, you'll need a hard drive that's a 2.5" SATA drive. Here's some drives that would work with your machine (there are others, these are just a few):
(1) 320 GB 5400 RPM SATA (2) 500 GB 7200 RPM SATA (3) 640 GB 5400 RPM SATA Here's a link to the installation instructions If you need to return a part, just send an email to our support team and we'll get you set up with an RMA.

I have a TripleHead2Go that I use with my MacBook Pro 15" Santa Rosa machine. It's running at 3840x1024 resolution and working great. I'm running Mac OS 10.5.8 and have version 1.01.00.005 of the control panel software installed. My TripleHead2Go has a USB port for power and communicating with the control panel. I normally power the box with an external USB power adapter, but if I want to use the control panel, then I have to plug the USB plug directly into my machine. If it's plugged into an external power adapter the display still works great as long as it's pre-configured correctly, but the Matrox software doesn't detect device or allow me to change any settings in the control panel.

If you're only getting three hours of battery life, the battery's probably pretty worn down. According to Apple, you should get up to 14 hours music playback on a 30 GB iPod Video and 20 hours on the 60/80 GB iPod Video. Here's the Apple source, including their specific testing procedure:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1322 Fortunately, replacing the battery in an iPod Video is both pretty easy and not that expensive. There one thing to watch out for is that you get the correct battery, as there are two different batteries for the iPod Video. There's a thinner battery for the 30 GB model, and a thicker one for the 60/80 GB model.

The battery screws on these machines are not a normal 6-pointed Torx screw. Unfortunately the 5-pointed type screw that this machine uses is patented and screwdriver manufacturers will not sell them to the general public. Apple's clearly chosen this screw because they don't want you removing the battery. We'd love to offer the screwdrivers for sale, but haven't figured out any way that we can legally do so. The good news is that in our testing we were able to remove these screws using a 1.5 or 1.6 mm flathead screwdriver, so that's probably your best bet.

Unfortunately, opening a hard drive without a clean room probably isn't going to solve your issue. If the hard drive is clicking, it's most likely an issue with the drive's actuator arm. Some people have had success giving the drive a mild shock to free the arm, but If you're resorting to that I wouldn't trust the drive for anything important in the future. On some drives, you can replace the controller board without opening the drive. In 1.8" drives, Samsung drives are designed this way. Unfortunately, if you have an iPod Video, it likely has a Toshiba drive, meaning the controller board is integrated into the drive and can't be removed or changed without opening up the drive. If the drive's dead and you've never seen the insides of a drive, it's fun to take a look at the platter and arm inside the drive. Most 1.8 drives are held together with small Torx screws. Unfortunately, if you have a Toshiba drive they use a 5-pointed Torx bit instead of the normal 6-pointed Torx bit. The bad news is that this screw t...

If you really want to be energy efficient, you could put a LED bulb in it. The good news is they use far less power than even compact fluorescent bulbs, and last far longer. The bad news is they cost a fortune, a quick search showed $40 for a 60-watt equivalent bulb (that actually uses 7 watts). They claim a lifespan of > 50,000 hours, I'm not sure if that's true, but if it is that's about 10 times better than a compact fluorescent and 50 times better than an incandescent bulb.

Commenti Guida

You're right, we don't have pentalobe bits in our bit driver kit just yet. However, we've been working on a new revision of the kit that among other improvements includes pentalobe bits. The specific bit we used in the teardown was one of our preproduction samples. Unfortunately I don't have a good ETA for when we'll have these pentalobe bits available, but we are actively working on the project.

It appears that iPad screws may actually be T4. I used a T3 bit, but others have reported success with a T4 bit. Fortunately, we include both T3 and T4 bits in the 54-piece kit that we already sell. We don't have the iPad glass yet, but we're definitely hoping to offer it in the near future. It looks like at least one person needs a replacement glass already.

We don't know who manufactured the display from the unit in this teardown. If anyone knows, we'd love a tip. On another iPad we opened, the LCD markings were different and the panel was clearly manufactured by LG.

Have you been able to identify the materials or surfaces that they inspect on iPhones and now, iPads?

The iPad does feature liquid damage indicators. Apple will deny warranty coverage if these are activated (they turn pink after coming in contact with moisture). There appear to be two of these on the iPad, one in the headphone jack and one near the dock connector.

On the iPhone 3G and 3GS, Apple was nice enough to use visible screws instead of tabs. Since the iPad lacks screws and is held together with tabs, I think it's unlikely you could get the iPad apart with a single suction cup. We'll be working on figuring out the least invasive way to get your iPad opened up.